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Post by timoneill on Aug 24, 2012 13:10:38 GMT
According to Jim West and James McGrath, we will soon see another attack on the Mythers by an esteemed (non-Christian) scholar. Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? by Maurice Casey will be released in the next 12 months, apparently. Anyone who has read his weighty and superb Jesus of Nazareth from earlier this year or read his smackdown of Doherty and Godfrey on Joseph Hoffmann's blog will be keen to see what he has to say. He's a man who doesn't exactly pull his punches and it seems the online Myther treehouse club has got him ready to come out swinging.
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Post by sankari on Aug 24, 2012 13:41:49 GMT
Excellent. Casey's work at Hoffman's blog was superb. I wasn't aware he'd written a book. Must hunt it down.
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Post by timoneill on Aug 24, 2012 13:52:50 GMT
Excellent. Casey's work at Hoffman's blog was superb. I wasn't aware he'd written a book. Must hunt it down. It's not out yet. It's still at the editing stage with no publication date as yet. Watch this space for more news. |
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Post by sankari on Aug 24, 2012 15:16:12 GMT
Excellent. Casey's work at Hoffman's blog was superb. I wasn't aware he'd written a book. Must hunt it down. It's not out yet. It's still at the editing stage with no publication date as yet. Watch this space for more news. Sorry, I meant his other one: Jesus of Nazareth. |
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Post by timoneill on Aug 24, 2012 20:06:56 GMT
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Post by sankari on Aug 24, 2012 22:32:10 GMT
Excellent, sounds like a winner.  |
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labarum
Master of the Arts
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Post by labarum on Aug 24, 2012 23:43:41 GMT
This should be quite interesting. I think Ehrman underestimated the complete looniness of the mythicist crowd. He saw that Carrier had at the surface level a more scholarly approach in his books than the outright quackery of Acharya S and maybe thought he could play the seasoned professor showing the young whippersnapper the errors of his ways. In other words, he never read Carrier's blog which can at times offer just as much of the paranoid delusions as anything from the Zeitgeist crowd.
With everything that has gone down since, I think Casey knows what kind of nutcases he is dealing with and it appears he has more of the taste for spanking snotty little brats who think they know more than they actually do. From reading his article, one gets the idea he has sent more than one cocky first year grad student away with his tail betwen his legs.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 25, 2012 6:08:07 GMT
Thanks guys too for this reference. I am sure you have mentioned Casey before Tim, and I've read some of his recent anti-mythicist pieces, but this time I checked out this book on Amazon, where small but crucial sections are available to be read. I thought it looked interesting and useful and I intend to read it. I am not a scholar, I have limited time to read scholarly books, and my interest as a christian is more in the practicalities of living as a follower of Jesus. But I want to be as true as I can to the historical evidence. So as a rule of thumb, I assume that anything generally conceded as unhistorical by christian scholars I can assume is probably unhistorical, while anything found to be true by non-christian or sceptical scholars and I can take to be probably historical. This defines the fringes of scholarship for me, and in between these two limits I can read and make my own judgments. (If that sounds like an engineering approach to history, so be it!) Presently, I generally use Michael Grant and EP Sanders as my two sceptical scholars to establish a lowest common denominator of belief, with occasional use of Bart Ehrman, while my touchstone christian scholars are NT Wright, Richard Bauckham and Craig Evans, with some help from Aussie historian John Dickson (not in the others' league as a scholar, but a good interpreter). I think Maurice Casey might be a good one to add to the list - both Sanders and Grant are getting a little out of date now. I note that Casey gives very favourable mention to Sanders, as well as to Vermes, who I have read but not got so much out of, I'm not sure why. He also speaks moderately favourably of Wright. So, forgive my rambling, but thanks for the pointer. |
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labarum
Master of the Arts
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Post by labarum on Aug 26, 2012 17:17:41 GMT
Presently, I generally use Michael Grant and EP Sanders as my two sceptical scholars to establish a lowest common denominator of belief, with occasional use of Bart Ehrman, while my touchstone christian scholars are NT Wright, Richard Bauckham and Craig Evans, with some help from Aussie historian John Dickson (not in the others' league as a scholar, but a good interpreter). If I may suggest another to add to your list on the orthodox side, I would suggest checking out Charles E. Hill. I have two of his books and one was superb and the other, which I am currently reading, is thus far. "Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity" is one of the few books in recent years that had something interesting to add to the study of patristic eschatology. He went through all the sources who were chiliasts and those who were not and came to some very interesting and somewhat surprising conclusions on how this belief system developed. It is backed up with specific quotations and examples. His recent "Who Chose the Gospels?: Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy" (I am about a third through it) examines the current wave among some scholars to place every and any gospel on an equal footing with the canonicals if you go back far enough before Constantine. Hill, whose expertise is in patristics, goes through it all with a fine tooth comb and completely destroys this trend. There are things in there that were so devastating to that position it sent me back though the Church Fathers looking them up because I could not believe burying the last few decades worth of scholarship on this stuff would be so easy. Apparently a lot of scholars who go off an peel out a quote or two do not bother checking a lot of the early Christians they cite in much depth. It may not be as bad as what Carrier, et al, have been doing, but it certainly does raise eyebrows. |
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Post by wraggy on Jan 5, 2013 1:49:52 GMT
James McGrath is considering starting an on-line index of Jesus Myth claims. The index and the responses to those claims will be created for the benefit of the general public. Quote: "It was recently suggested to me that it might be useful to put together an index of mythicist claims, and the answers and responses to those claims from the perspective of mainstream historical study. Although it can be said that every claim by mythicists has probably been addressed at least implicitly in scholarly monographs and articles at some point, there is a need for those points to be collated and summarized online for the benefit of the general public".www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2013/01/announcing-talkhistoricity-an-index-of-mythicist-claims.html |
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Post by wraggy on Jul 17, 2013 2:15:18 GMT
I replied to a comment on a society religion and politics branch of what is essentially an Aussie rules football thread to the question of a the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth and it seems that the old conspiracies are strong amongst mythers.
Roylion says:
So yes the majority of Biblical scholars do regard as Jesus having existed. Most are former Christians including Bart Ehrman and Gerd Ludemann. Maurice Casey is a former Christian as well. None of them can conceive of a mythical Jesus. They take his existence for granted. Renowned Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman himself recognises that he was once a fervent Christian and that his thinking even subconsciously has been influenced by his early roots of Christian belief. He says himself he cannot totally divorce himself from his original beliefs.
It's interesting. As soon as a scholar becomes skeptical of a historical Jesus, for example, they are suddenly written-off as "fringe." They are looked down upon by the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and others. The peer pressure keeping most scholars from speaking their minds questioning the status-quo is still there even today. It just demonstrates how out of balance academia still is to this day regarding religion. They assume, a priori, that Jesus must have existed and work from there without ever substantiating the claim first. Meanwhile, they have no problem accepting that Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian, Greek, Roman and other 'godmen', are all presently accepted as myths, rather than historical figures. So, they're all mythicists EXCEPT when it comes to Jesus.
As a further example of Christian pressure brought to bear on scholars that deviate too far from the accepted theology comes from Germany. In 1999 Gerd Ludemann’s published his book "The Great Deception: (And What Jesus Really Said and Did)”. He argued in the book that only about five per cent of the sayings attributed to Jesus are genuine and the historical evidence does not support the claims of traditional Christianity, which includes the resurrection. This led to calls for his dismissal by the Confederation of Protestant Churches a Chair of New Testament Studies in Theological Faculty of the University of Göttingen. However under pressure from members of his faculty, Ludemann’s research funding was cut and his teaching was cut from the university’s curriculum.
Edit: A search of Wiki supports the claim that Ludermann had funds cut due to his ideas. www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/the-god-question.885882/page-320It seems like he has pulled text from this site, unless these are also his work. www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=18805I think that time would have been better practicing guitar. By the way Tim O'Neill, are you going to respond to Fitzgerald or are there more important things to spend your time on? |
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Post by ignorantianescia on Jul 17, 2013 8:47:40 GMT
All of us are familiar with how Mythicists, especially the underlings, often resemble other daft crank movements like anti-evolutionists, truthers and climate deniers and this bloke demonstrates a similar tendency to parrot an incorrect but 'canonical' description of the facts. I'll outline some more details, which indicate he did not do any half-serious research for his claims and likely only read the version of the Acharya S groupies you found.
First, it is important to know that theology faculties in Germany are not secular but confessional. They are intended to educate clergy and RE teachers. That does not mean there are no secular chairs for investigation into the Old and the New Testament and early Christianity, but the required courses for a theology degree will be taught by holders of confessional positions. This means that church organisations on the state level have a say who holds these positions.
Framing this as some sort of oppressive device against scholars who stray from "accepted theology", a label of course needed for the Mythicist to make it relevant to the historicity of Jesus (Lüdemann's case has no bearing at all on the historicity of Jesus), is not a honest move because it only applies to confessional scholars and not scholarship in general.
In Lüdemann's case this also applied, although he was not completely sacked, but appointed to a newly created secular chair with special status. It did have several disadvantages, because his subjects did not have any credit for a theology study, he was not allowed to act as a supervisor for dissertations and because of his objections, his funds were cut by almost one half.
It is actually dubious to label this simply "Christian pressure" because it was pressure by a state confederation of churches that seems to be rather conservative. Other Protestant theological faculties seem to be more tolerant, like Tübingen.
None of this has any bearing on scholarly restraints of considering that Jesus might not have existed, as the limits were purely confessional, as the courts stated (Lüdemann's dismissal has been upheld by the courts on religious grounds among other reasons). So they also have an unrelated secondary control mechanism which is that many scholars are influenced by residual Christian beliefs and therefore unable to conceive Mythicism. There is much to be said again this crazy conspiracy theory but I'll just point out that there have been self-styled Christian Mythicists, like Hermann Detering, who has even been able to work as a minister in Berlin, sinking this silly theory. This doesn't mean the model at German theological faculties is palatable of course.
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Post by fortigurn on Jul 17, 2013 9:01:53 GMT
I'll outline some more details, which indicate he did not do any half-serious research for his claims and likely only read the version of the Acharya S groupies you found. Most informative, thank you. It's always a pleasure to read a post by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. |
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Post by wraggy on Jul 17, 2013 9:19:50 GMT
I'll outline some more details, which indicate he did not do any half-serious research for his claims and likely only read the version of the Acharya S groupies you found. Most informative, thank you. It's always a pleasure to read a post by someone who actually knows what they're talking about. I try and look after you Fortigurn by abstaining from frequent posts. ;D |
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Post by timoneill on Jul 17, 2013 12:00:10 GMT
By the way Tim O'Neill, are you going to respond to Fitzgerald or are there more important things to spend your time on? I've been tinkering with a long reply for some time, but I'm finding going over the same stuff again and again pretty tedious. I will try to get something up in the next couple of weeks, hectic social life willing. Unlike people like Godfrey et al, having actual friends and relationships etc can get in the way of posting obsessive niggling over minutiae. |
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